Simulation theory

a reply to: theyknowwhoyouare

Consciousness is NOT just a mathematical model - this is where modern science is extremely wrong in my humble opinion. However, I agree that our reality may very well be simulated (hence a creation - back to a Creator/Creators).

You cannot bring life to awareness through just 'information', you can only mimic awareness. I have put so much thought into this matter, that I cannot possibly do it justice through this format, but I shall present to you a logical thought experiment.

Our current paradigm is that your consciousness (and hence YOU - the person who controls the body and actually FEELS the inputs/outputs) is a complete sub-system of the mind and the body. That is to say, consciousness is ultimately the product of a specific configuration of atomic matter (in the form of cells/neurons/circuits and so forth).

There's a few problems with this. Firstly, we KNOW (as you said) that all experience and hence form arises purely in the head, and therefore atomic information is NOT objective, only the 'source'. This is a paradox however. Your brain only exists due to your consciousness but your consciousness only exists due to your brain.

Secondly, and more importantly, as of the current moment, we can logically deduce that such a system cannot give rise to awareness, meaning that consciousness is fundamentally separate.

Lets use a perfect analogy in relation to our existence. Lets assume I want to create a robot that follows a black line on white paper. Therefore, we have an information source (our universe), a body (the complete physicality of the robot) and a mind (the software - the code that governs the body).

We give the robot some eyes, in the form of lenses that focus the specific wavelength of black/white light causing an electro-chemical reaction that feeds to a logic circuit which will then feed into actuation (correct movement) based on some governing laws.

Our current paradigm is that if you keep increasing the complexity of that simple robot, you arrive at us. There's no two ways around it - that's exactly what we are saying. It's wrong.

That robot will NEVER actually SEE the black line. There is no fundamentally separate entity observing the act of information transfer, there is simply just information transfer.

The only way we can accept this paradigm is to accept that EVERY system of a mind and body (sense and program) is conscious i.e your PC, phone, television, xbox and so forth.

At what point will that robot ever actually SEE and FEEL? At one point does it become conscious of sense? You cannot code consciousness of sense, simply reaction to sense.

For example, just because we understand how an emotion is processed on an atomic informational level in our body, does not mean something has to actually FEEL the emotion. All that is required is a reaction which can equally be coded and unconscious. This is psychology.

However, the thing that hears and spawns your thoughts, who sees and feels the universe, and who chooses what to pursue with their body, is nothing less than a soul, for all lack of better word, and has to be fundamentally separate to make any sense from our framework of understanding.

This does NOT automatically mean an afterlife exists. It could simply mean that this reality is a quantum simulation, where your 'soul' is being simueltaneously simulated alongside the 'physical' word in an entangled state, but fundamentally separate.

However, it would genuinely mean that the possibilities of the meaning of this universe become endless, and we should consider it more carefully than charging blindly towards atheism.

The closest analogy I can offer is that of yourself and your computer. You wish to access an informational field (the Internet) which in its normal form provides absolutely no chance for you to meaningfully interact with it.

Only when you 'take on' the body of a computer, which can properly convert this information, do you get a MEANINGFUL experience. And this can only arise when 3-factors are present - the mind/body/soul.

And just like humans on a PC, it doesn't matter how equal we were prior to taking on these bodies, our capabilities and hence chances are ultimately affected by the conduit we are given.

If I'm a master of video game 'x', and I challenge another person to a match, and we are given vastly different computers in terms of processing power, I will suddenly be at a huge disadvantage regardless how clued up and able I was 'going into it'.

This is why you should be very careful of how you treat those with less abled conduits (physical and mental). This extends to how we punish the crimes of certain people.

Likewise, the moment you become truly aware of your own consciousness (enlightenment for all due intents and purposes), you instantly take on a duty in the higher purpose of the universe because you are now aware of your own actions (beyond simply the 'mind' - the programmed behaviours and responses) and hence must take full responsibility if ever required to stand before the 'masters'.

Much of our human troubles arise from trapping ourselves within the 'mind' - effectively convincing the 'soul' that the 'mind' is who it is, and hence allowing it to fall victim to all the negative symptoms of the 'ego'.

We still make the grave mistake in modern days of believing we are ultimately slaves to psychology, not understanding that the illusions of the mind/ego/subconscious begin to fall apart once the 'soul' is aware.

I feel sorry for those fools who are trying to attempt to 'transfer' their consciousness into a robot. I have never heard such nonsense in my entire life - in the name of science!

All that will happen is the original 'soul' will die and the robot will be a soul-less entity mimicking a human and continuing to appear to 'develop' as a human based on the algorithms and memories pre-assigned to it.

Are we meant to die? There is NOTHING more important than this question, for it completely shifts the goal of the human race. Currently, our mainstream paradigm is that we should FULLY STRIVE for immortality - we are lucky one-off creatures in a lucky one-off meaningless universe and we MUST attempt to live forever.

On the other hand, if we can deduce that we have fundamentally separate components to our existence, we can make the assumption that perhaps we were in a sense 'placed here' for whatever reason, and in that sense, nothing becomes more important than our actions in relation to other souls subjectively experiencing this objective divine source.

Peace.

originally posted by: swanne
a reply to: Restricted

I agree. I believe that the universe still exist even when we don't perceive it with our eyes or our other senses.

I know, it may sound silly to most people. But I feel that this is the truth. Otherwise, if the universe was merely a construct of our individual imagination, why would so many people point their telescopes at, say, the Andromeda Galaxy, and always get the same picture, no matter the individual?

The answer: the universe exist regardless of the individual, unless the individual of course starts physically tampering with it.

See, I don't believe that something is not real just bc it is simulated. If we were able to create fully conscious individuals within a simulation of a created universe they would be real conscious individuals. Regardless of the fact that they are data streams they would still exist and experience life like us. I believe our universe is artificial and whether we are plugged in somewhere else, or exist in the simulation only, we are still real.

right down to the atomic level we are just ones and zeroes. If we were created with sentience we are real and will continue to be real.

I think it would be cool as hell if we were created artificially and imprinted onto cyborgs of some sort after death.

a reply to: DazDaKing

You may be right, or you may be wrong. With our limited knowledge we are not at a point where we are capable of figuring out the truth on that particular matter.

The reason I posted the second video that states that, is the fact that this "physical" mind of ours runs in mathematical patterns and therefore has a separate unknown location for consciousness.

I feel that our true selves are located outside this universe, outside of the processors.

a reply to: swanne

I think you may be thinking of it slightly wrong.

It's not that the universe disappears without humans or is completely relative to each and every individual, its that the form we perceive it in is completely a construct of our human minds. The way we see a galaxy for example, is completely subjective to the human sense processing system (generally speaking).

The way we feel heat, the way we see colours, the way we experience the physical laws and so forth, is completely unique to us. It isn't how the universe exists without us. It doesn't look like this without us. If you suddenly removed every human from the universe, it would still exist, but in the other relative forms.

If you remove ALL sense processing life (i.e down to the cell), then yes, the universe will truly exist as nothing but information, and WILL NOT hold some sort of solid objective form. Remember, solidity itself is a COMPLETE ILLUSION.

I know it all sounds extremely counter-intuitive, but it's practically empirically and logically deducible knowledge now. It is also very powerful knowledge.

We know for fact that an atom can and will exist in all possible positions until information is extracted from it by sense. It ignores all physical phenomena except the processing of sense, and only then does it choose to become what appears to us as a 'solid particle'.

The universe as we know it is literally held together by an awareness of this atomic transfer of information.
If you remove the awareness, you are simply left with atomic information, not physical phenomena (actual stars and galaxies for example).

Of course, that would logically mean that there had to be a form of awareness at the universe's birth, for the atomic information to keep acting under laws (and hence growing in complexity) rather than all choosing to exist everywhere (their simplest form).

A comical outcome to say the least.

originally posted by: DazDaKing
a reply to: swanne

I think you may be thinking of it slightly wrong.

It's not that the universe disappears without humans or is completely relative to each and every individual, its that the form we perceive it in is completely a construct of our human minds. The way we see a galaxy for example, is completely subjective to the human sense processing system (generally speaking).

The way we feel heat, the way we see colours, the way we experience the physical laws and so forth, is completely unique to us. It isn't how the universe exists without us. It doesn't look like this without us. If you suddenly removed every human from the universe, it would still exist, but in the other relative forms.

If you remove ALL sense processing life (i.e down to the cell), then yes, the universe will truly exist as nothing but information, and WILL NOT hold some sort of solid objective form. Remember, solidity itself is a COMPLETE ILLUSION.

I know it all sounds extremely counter-intuitive, but it's practically empirically and logically deducible knowledge now. It is also very powerful knowledge.

We know for fact that an atom can and will exist in all possible positions until information is extracted from it by sense. It ignores all physical phenomena except the processing of sense, and only then does it choose to become what appears to us as a 'solid particle'.

The universe as we know it is literally held together by an awareness of this atomic transfer of information.
If you remove the awareness, you are simply left with atomic information, not physical phenomena (actual stars and galaxies for example).

Of course, that would logically mean that there had to be a form of awareness at the universe's birth, for the atomic information to keep acting under laws (and hence growing in complexity) rather than all choosing to exist everywhere (their simplest form).

A comical outcome to say the least.

I had not taken the discussion in that direction, let alone into that much depth. I started this thread with simple concepts mainly for those that have not yet entertained the idea. I do very much enjoy the content you have provided. My response was an agreement. Though your opinion is a good one it is too full of philosophy to approach from a logical perspective at this point, and with such little amounts of hard science. Thank you for your contribution, I really enjoyed the read.


Oh btw it is well known that we experience everything in this world through a heavily filter. Sight, sound, taste, etc. This is well known due to the studies of animals and their heightened senses.


We know very little of this reality.

a reply to: theyknowwhoyouare

I fear, my friend, that we can and will never deduce the correct answer based on empirical science alone. Yet, empirical science has given us more clues than ever now that this reality is a simulation. The dots are there to be connected, it is simply a big jump for the modern human to make, who has been raised with such a specific way of seeing the universe.

The double slit experiment alone, in my opinion, confirms this. Why else would the sub-atomic science be ruled by our sense, if this whole creation wasn't spawned for the interaction between sense and the source of information?

This is exactly how we make our own simulations as humans already. The code is only 'pulled up' when its required to be.

My whole opinion is based on this foundation stone, which is scientific and not philosophical. Beyond that is philosophical/logical, because you can never empirically prove that consciousness is programmable so we MUST at one point begin to philosophise, apply logic and conduct thought experiments with the scientific knowledge we do have.

It's interesting because, whether you believe in a soul or not, the conclusion is the same based on LOGIC. If you believe in the soul-less, programmable consciousness model, the simulation argument mathematically/statistically becomes the most logical outcome, which suggests we weren't the 'original' humans.

I guess that's why this topic will always in a sense turn down this route. It is automatically the next question raised regardless of how you cut it, and nullifies the actual question of soul vs no-soul. It doesn't matter at this point.

Empirical science will never provide you an answer to this question though. That is, as of now, logically deducible. Any consciousness 'test' can be fooled. If you can think of a test that TRULY checks for consciousness, I'd love to know.

We have to consider what we can logically deduce. I refuse to sit and keep waiting for science to play catch-up. 10 years ago I knew personally on a logical basis (just like I claim to now) that all our senses (and hence variations in sense) were a product of the vibrational frequency of the relevant atoms.

I would have gambled my life on it gladly. That's how convinced I become of something when all the pieces fall together in such a way.

This was only confirmed a couple of years ago empirically and even then it 'stunned' scientists and 'solved a long mystery' lol. My point is sometimes critical thinking is more effective and even simply required over empirical evidence.

Personally, I only have to move my hands and summon thoughts at my will to understand I am fundamentally a separate entity experiencing the most brilliant creation I can comprehend in this form as of now.

A wise Native American once said:

"You whites do not make sense. You look to a book to confirm to you the existence of the divine, but we only need to LIVE to understand the spirit that flows throughout all living things and hence the universe."

What's your gut instinct on the whole thing? Forget the science for a second, what has the entirety of your life's events leading up to the 'now' taught you about this place? What has it taught you about your own self-existence, and your own thoughts, and your own reactions to your own thoughts?

Can you really map that whole entirety of experience into 0s and 1s?

originally posted by: DazDaKing
The way we feel heat, the way we see colours, the way we experience the physical laws and so forth, is completely unique to us.

I am colour-blind so I can certainly relate to that. And it is with respect that I disagree...

Although every humans' senses will indeed perceive the Universe differently, it nevertheless stands that the Universe is constant - the colour red will still be an electromagnetic radiation with wavelength 650 nm, gravitational pull still follows Einsteinian formulas, etc. You could indeed remove every sensory cells in the Universe, the Universe would still retain its solid objective form - because, the thing is, not only these constant influence life, but also every particles and energy quantas in the universe.

originally posted by: VidGamrJ
Great post! I've always been a fan of the simulation theory and it's nice to see a post with lots of info about it.

Mr Mask, I've always been a fan of your video on the theory and I'm glad I can finally take this opportunity to thank you for making it. Your video is a great starter point for people who are interested in the simulation theory. It's straight to the point, has lots of valid arguments, you make it easy to understand, plus it's solid entertainment and will keep people watching and listening even if they think the simulation theory is BS.

Aww thanks man. The funny thing about that video- its a video about us maybe living in a video game- and its footage of me playing a video game...and it was the first video of mine to ever be noticed. Did the simulation reward me for making it? Or did I just happen on a topic people enjoy? lol.

Thanks, really. I love this topic and find it fascinating.

MM

a reply to: swanne

But my dear friend... Electromagnetism only exists because of the way we perceive the base sub-atomic reality.

We know that an atom will choose to exist everywhere (and hence nowhere) if we do not attempt to track its movement from A to B (double slit experiment). It only takes a form and hence applies the rules of electromagnetism at point A and point B.

When there is no attempt to gather sensory information on the path from A to B, the atom drops its properties of a particle (and hence the electromagnetic force due to the vibration of this particle) and takes on the form of a probability wave function (not an EM wave).

That would scientifically suggest that in the absence of sensory perception, the atom does NOT carry on perpetuating the physical reality, but resides back to the informational source, which is completely metaphysical just like computer code is to the actual software running.

This also suggests that the atom ignores the fact that it technically has to interact with other atoms from A to B, as long as sensory perception isn't applied. That would seriously suggest that in the absence of all sensory perception, the universe as a 'solid', constant and consistent form does not exist in reality, but merely a possibility within the infinite combination of information from the 'source'.

I know this sounds nuts. How did the universe get to the stage of harbouring life if it did not exist as a consistent form prior to life? Two answers to that really. One is that there was sensory perception from the start, an outside awareness of our universe - 'God' - which began and to this day keeps the atomic dance going.

The second answer is that the universe started as DIRECTED informational code, and only when the first sensory life was formed by the code, did the universe actually take form. Does that make sense? This answer would seriously suggest some concept of conscious creation.

At least that's what the double slit experiment has always suggested to me on a gut feeling level. The atom drops all properties as a particle and that confirms that it CAN drop the electromagnetic force which confirms that it is not defined from the start as a particle, but rather the source is defined by us as a particle.

Please do research the double slit experiment if you aren't entirely sure what I'm on about lol.

The information source is constant, I agree.

The way that information is perceived top to bottom, and hence that specific form and configuration of the universe, is completely subjective to and hence dependent on the corresponding sensory system - or it would seem to be so at least.

a reply to: DazDaKing

At least that's what the double slit experiment has always suggested to me on a gut feeling level. The atom drops all properties as a particle and that confirms that it CAN drop the electromagnetic force which confirms that it is not defined from the start as a particle, but rather the source is defined by us as a particle.

The atom drops its properties not because we simply perceived it with our senses, as your post seem to suggest, but actually because we (physicists) put an actual device to measure the particle's properties, thus interfering with it through the Heisenberg principle. From Wikipedia:

If, for instance, any device is used in any way that can determine whether a particle has passed through one slit or the other, the interference pattern formerly produced will then disappear.

Remember that physicists cannot see particles with their naked eyes - thus, to "observe" a particle, they must submit it to a beam of electron or any similar (highly-interfering) devices - because it is through this interaction that the particle reveals some of its properties (such as its position). Unfortunately, since a particle is small enough to obey the Uncertainty Principle, any beam of electron or similar method of observation will kick the particle our of its position, impair energy to it, etc., in such a way that it makes the particle's other properties (such as momentum) less predictable.

Remember also that the double-slit experiment's results only applies to double slits - these results do not appear in triple-slit experiments, or in any experiments with more than two slits for that matters. This seems highly contradictory to the suggestion that visual perception forces matter to physicality in any system - why would materialization-through-conscious-observation stop being effective when more than two slits are present? And the world has alot of slits and cracks...

The double slit experiment is a brilliant demonstration of the success of quantum theory. It is not a proof that our visual sense can "magically" give physical from to matter. In fact, most quantum physicist are working hard to undo some misunderstandings about the quantum model which the New Age movement has spread.

a reply to: swanne

Don't you understand that our senses extend to ALL measurement techniques we use?

Attempting to detect the sub-atomic particle from A to B through the means of using a gravity based system or an EM based system is exactly what I mean by sensory information.

I don't mean literally just the act of human sight. It's the act of meaningful information conversion. It is meaningful because of us, but the sense can be anything that induces this informational transform.

No matter how you cut the experiment to me, or attempt to explain it as a trivial demonstration of quantum mechanics, the fact remains that the atom WILL drop its properties as a particle in the absence of any sensory tool - including measurement devices which are inherently linked to our sense.

That negates your whole point about an atom still giving out an EM wavelength of 'x' nanometres in the absence of information extraction. The double slit experiment directly contradicts this.

Why does the atom act as a probability function in the absence of information gathering? It has to still exchange information with the energy medium from A to B, if the rules of the universe (and hence the atomic interactions) are always consistent and ever acting?

At no point did you answer that. All you simply said to me was that it was the act of measurement that caused the atom to collapse from a probability function to a physical law based function, which is in essence absolutely no different from the sensory analogy I was using from the start.

Also, as far as I know, triple slit experiments also display the change from interference pattern to particle. This is consistent from the moment you start using 2 slits. 3 slits and above can be taken to be a function of superimposed double slit results.

I have no idea where you heard that the triple slit experiment negates any finding of the original double slit version?

The key point, over and over, is that in the absence of sense/measurement a sub-atomic 'particle' or atomic particle will STOP abiding by the direct laws of physics, and essentially 'cheat' by existing everywhere and then only plotting its past path and hence final destination at the detector screen based on a PROBABILITY function.

I really can't see how you can't see that such a finding suggests that the atom is NOT bounded to be an atom inherently, and therefore an atom does NOT inherently exhibit properties such as electromagnetic radiation, UNLESS its information is transferred to a system that requires the atom to behave so for consistency of reality.

The fact that such a finding is even present should make you wonder, rather than simply say 'its just quantum mechanics'. Essentially, it is a rule of the universe that only creates the relevant 'reality' when required to do so.

In a video game the graphics/physics etc only exist in the form we recognise as 'graphics' and 'physics' when your processing system interacts with it. At all other times, it is simply a collection of 0s and 1s.

If you apply this analogy to our universe, you are effectively saying that even if I take the video game CD out of my computer, and hence stop processing it (information conversion i.e Fourier transforms) the CD will still contain exactly the same 'graphics' and 'physics' as a CONSTANT, and in a still acting form.

Furthermore, you're saying regardless of what processing system I insert my CD into, those original 'graphics and physics' will continue to exist (in the background so to say) as they were with the original processor.

If I destroyed the original processor, alongside the ability to recreate it, the original 'video game' will be destroyed as well, for its conceivable form in terms of graphics/physics and so forth was inherently linked to how those 0s and 1s were converted.

What I'm saying is, how those 0s and 1s on the disc are perceived, and hence the accompanying forms/rules/graphics/physics etc. are entirely based on the processing system used.

Are you of the opinion that the four fundamental forces created the sub-atomic base reality, rather than the four fundamental forces being a product of how the sub-atomic base reality is decoded?

Remember, the fundamental forces are all a property of the dynamics of the sub-atomic, and we know that the atom abandons dynamics in the absence of sense.

Of course, because at this stage of our universe we are so intimately linked in sense (including all things that can process information thanks to the butterfly effect) it acts as a consistent system, hence a tree does create a vibration even if no one is there to perceive the sound, for other sensory forms will process that vibration, whether directly or indirectly.

However, what we can agree on is that those 'atoms' are 0s and 1s either way, and therefore the information is constant.

a reply to: DazDaKing

Why does the atom act as a probability function in the absence of information gathering?

In the quantum model, no underlying mechanism is given to exactly explain why. All it do is (as its name suggest) model an un-observed particle as being "probably" there (or this), thus the term "probability wave". The double-slit experiment proves that the quantum model's formulas are accurate. But a formula is a representation of something - it is not something. One must not confuse physical existence with abstract concepts. An analogy: if I have to make a house of bricks to shelter myself, writting on a piece of paper "A House of Bricks" won't provide me much shelter. Although the words "A House of Bricks" accurately represent what I need, they do not serve as a real house of bricks.

I have no idea where you heard that the triple slit experiment negates any finding of the original double slit version?

It was Max Born himself (leading figure in quantum model) who predicted this negation phenomenon in 1926. He was proven right by Sinha and colleagues in 2010.

What I'm saying is, how those 0s and 1s on the disc are perceived, and hence the accompanying forms/rules/graphics/physics etc. are entirely based on the processing system used.

But what happens when two (or more) observers check the same source?

If the information is subjective to the observer, how come observations will always lead to the same result, no matter the observer? The scientific method includes "replication". If, say, the mass of a body is entirely subjective, then shouldn't it vary according to the subject observing it? And doesn't this imply that, say, the Moon's mass (which is composed of tiny particles) would vary accordingly, and that it is nothing more than an extraordinary coincidence if two scientists measure the Moon and get matching results for its mass?

However, what we can agree on is that those 'atoms' are 0s and 1s either way, and therefore the information is constant.

Indeed.